Issue 2 (60)

2024

Publication date: 08.2024

Description

The publication of this volume was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Management and Social Communication & Polish Academy of Sciences.

Cover design: Małgorzata Flis

Licence: CC BY

Editorial team

Secretary Justyna Janik

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Ewelina Twardoch-Raś

Editor-in-Chief Anna Nacher

Issue Editor Andrzej Gwóźdź

Issue content

Narracje cyrkularne – narracje liminalne. Wprowadzenie

Andrzej Gwóźdź

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 267-270

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.016.20327

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W kręgu idei

Interaktywny dokument i wizualizacja danych w dwóch ujęciach

Marcin Składanek

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 271-284

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.017.20328

The contemporary convergence of documentary practices and data visualization sets an interesting field for both creative and conceptual exploration. At the same time, however, at both levels we are still dealing with a challenge, a broad spectrum of possibilities still waiting to be filled with the full range of solutions. The aim of this text is to look at the phenomenon of interactive documents based on data visualization from two key perspectives. The first one is focused on the issue of the status of data and their visual representations in the context of Big Data as a set of culturally, socially, politically and business shaped database technologies, data analysis schemes and numerous ideologies that accompany these activities. There is also an interesting cognitive perspective of how data were and are conceptualized, produced and used both in the tradition of documentary film and in the domain of applied data visualizations. The second approach problematizes the tension between the sublime and the anti-sublime, as two opposing (although very often complementary in individual implementations) epistemic attitudes, which in data visualization research have been used as a tool for typologizing practices, but also as concepts capturing the transgressive value of visual representations of large scale data repositories.

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Między singularity i uncanny valley – pornografia wspierana przez sztuczną inteligencję a estetyka i narracja „obcości”

Jan Stasieńko

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 285-306

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.018.20329

The dynamic development of generative artificial intelligence systems constructing textual visual and audio content based on prompts (queries, descriptions, and tags) raises numerous questions regarding issues such as creative autonomy, the impact of automation on art generation processes, the value of typically human creativity, the scope of copyright, and intellectual property rights. Automatically generated texts, images, and sounds prompt experimentation and evoke both fascination and dread. In the article, I would like to focus on the impact of such tools on the realm of pornography. In the era of platforms based on systems like DALL-E, Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion, which typically censor erotic and pornographic content, the automatic creation of images depicting explicit sexual scenes primarily occurs through dedicated and increasingly numerous services such as Pornpen.ai, Promptchan.ai, PornX.ai, PornWorks.ai, PornJoy.ai, and others. The text will illustrate what types of technologies and cultural practices historically led to the emergence of AI pornographic services and to what extent existing theoretical concepts about pornography fit the description and interpretation of such phenomena. I will also highlight the current offerings of such services regarding their functionalities and capabilities for generating pornographic content. A significant portion of the article will analyze selected samples of Pornpen.ai content. The perception of images generated with the involvement of artificial intelligence scripts using this platform evokes a specific sense of otherness in both their aesthetic and narrative layers. This kind of new “uncanny valley” and those human-nonhuman narrative dynamics around sexuality will be the subject of my reflection in the final part of the discourse.

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Czy to naprawdę ja? Artystów gry z tożsamością algorytmiczną

Maciej Ożóg

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 307-323

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.019.20330

The article examines examples of artistic activities in which the problem of digitization of identity in the era of social media is critically addressed. Algorithmic data processing and thus creating a virtual shadow, the digital selves of users, are the key practices of surveillance capitalism. Therefore, to provide context to the analysis of works of three artists (Erica Sourti, Aram Bartholl, Timo Toots) a short overview of the evolution of the concept and practices of social media is introduced. From the very beginning, the key place in the concept of Web 2.0 and social media was assigned to the user, understood as an active agent, who autonomously creates and controls his/her position on the Internet. As economic and cultural hegemony of platforms increased, the gap between the ideology of active prosumers and practices resulting in the objectification, commodification and incapacitation of users became increasingly clear. A special role in this process is played by user profiling and the creation of digital identities that are useful from the point of view of corporations. By investigating the mechanisms of algorithmic power and its consequences for the status of users involved in online power relations, Scourti, Bartholl and Toots pose a number of questions crucial for understanding of contemporary culture dominated by social media moguls. What are the relationships between the embodied subject and his/her digital self? How does the digital re-creation of the subject influence the existential possibilities of users, their self-awareness and possibilities for self-governance? What are the consequences of commercial user profiling for understanding the very category of self? How can users influence the production and presence of digital identities? Is individual and social resistance to the instrumental power of surveillance capitalism possible? If so, what forms might it take?

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Narracje minimalne – narracje liminalne, czyli film w paradygmacie interfejsów

Andrzej Gwóźdź

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 324-338

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.020.20331

TikTokization has become not only a media fact, but – like everything related to the web – also a socio-cultural one. Being on TikTok has become a symbol of cultural energy of the web, conditioned by its exposed position within both the media themselves and mobile applications.

Also within strictly film, offline (cinema and television) or streaming practices, one can now notice a trend towards telling stories in the manner inspired by the features TikTok is the epitome of: minimizing narratives in favor of small stories (micronarratives) or the aesthetics of palimpsest. Such narratives situated between different orders of visibility, in reference to Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener (inspired by the concepts of Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep), I define as liminal. It is a type of visibility in which – owing to the presence of screen messages of various electronic devices in the film diegesis (and thus also non-cinematic and non-TV dispositives: smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.) – the filmic “window on the world” is replaced by the Surface of another screen, into which the viewer enters through subsequent visual interfaces of the film. As a result of this type of screen change, the traditional filmic “window on the world” is replaced by the figure of terminal which film represents with all its apparatus or refers its content to the world of image, thus neutralizing the image contact that is not specific to the film and making it invisible as an area of transition.

A number of visual orders, switches and apparatuses in the discussed films (Cam, Spree, Netflix series Emily in Paris) are constantly exchanged in the space of the viewer-observer drift – from overview to insight, creating an interface circuit of being in contact with screens. In this way, film creates an unstable position of the subject entangled in a network of quasi-social relations, being itself their fictitious representation.

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Pejzaże kultury

Magister Karolina Jarzębak. Artystka – semionautka – analityczka memów, rzeczniczka pokolenia Y

Magda Górska

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 339-354

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.021.20332

In the article, the author presents some of the works of the Polish artist Karolina Jarzębak, who uses cyber folklore in her work to narrate the problems of “millennials”, human loneliness and anxieties related to the current socio-political situation both in Poland and around the world. The analysis of artistic activity was based on the concepts of post-production and semionaut proposed by Nicolas Bourriaud and the theory of cultural remix, primarily in relation to its typology described in the theoretical texts of Eduardo Navas, where the so-called reflexive remix – the most important in these considerations – questions Benjamin’s aura and becoming an autonomous entity. Jarzębak’s multi-threaded works, created on the basis of Internet iconography centered around the so-called family of Oomer Wojaks, intertwine with forms characteristic of classical art history, but also of the 20th century neo-avant-garde. It opens the way to an extended interpretation of the works. The element that unites all the art installations is the reflection on the difficulties observed in social sciences in establishing lasting interpersonal relationships, faced by generations Y (and Z).

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Transformacje strategii narracyjnych w dobie popularności serwisów streamingowych i binge-watchingu

Barbara Orzeł

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 355-373

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.022.20333

We currently live in an era characterized by cultural excess and information overload. Over the last few decades, the widespread of new technological solutions and the dynamic development of on-demand entertainment services have profoundly changed the approach to television content. Streaming platforms meet the need for “immediacy” of “being instant”, and that is what modern viewers so much expect. The entertainment must be highly personalized and available from anywhere in the world; the stories produced must be attention-grabbing and engaging, and the application interface should be intuitive. The popularity of binge-watching has increased thanks to the development of streaming and VOD (video-on-demand) services, which began to offer entire seasons of productions, and viewers began to watch series in the form of “marathons”. The article describes contemporary narratives on streaming platforms, their impact on the definition of movies and series, and the emergence of new consumption behaviours. The research method used is a literature review. In the first part of the article, the author characterized the phenomenon of binge-watching – its most essential features, classifications and psychological motivations. The most important part of the article is an analysis of narrative strategies used by series creators, using Netflix as an example. Next, the author reflected on the problem of the fluidity of the definition of a film and a TV series and finally focused on the issue of the perception of TV series on available streaming platforms and the related changes in consumption behaviour. The conclusions provide a synthetic summary of the previous considerations and attempt to outline possible directions of changes.

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Kino, styki oraz tiki – pośród zwierciadeł przechadzających się po gościńcu

Janusz Bohdziewicz

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 374-389

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.023.20334

The purpose of this article is to discuss the concept of narration in the “electracy” (cultural phase following the orality and literacy). The article draws inspiration primarily from media theory (McLuhan, Ulmer) and comparative mythology (Campbell). The text analyzes the short film Get Lost in Great Stories (Jason Scott, 2020) which celebrates the power of big screen entertainment whilst shining a light on the overwhelming distractions in all of our everyday lives. The imaginations of cinema and media experiences included in the spot are analyzed in terms of time, space, attention, and engagement of communication participants. The text analyzed the indicated differences as manifestations of two culture models: the scene model and the interface model. The scene model assumes a separation between the work of art and the real world, as well as between the creator and the recipient. In contrast, the interface model combines reality and virtuality, influencers and followers, and describes the world of actions, rather than works of art. The essay argues that narratology is no longer useful when the „electracy” comes, but the concept of myth is more appropriate, because this term is not so much about telling a story as it is about creating a sense of intense life (Campbell). Nowadays, “comp-unication” on social media and co-creation of augmented reality are a new form of myth.

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Reviews and Resources

Art, Not-Art or Simply Aesthetics? (Book review: Frank Lantz, The Beauty of Games, The MIT Press, 2023)

Filip Jankowski

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (60) , 2024, pp. 390-397

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.24.024.20335

This article presents a critical analysis of Frank Lantz’s book The Beauty of Games. The book proposes a reevaluation of whether games can be considered art. Despite some inconsistencies, Lantz shifts the focus to a less controversial question: whether all games can be regarded as aesthetic objects. He structures his arguments by referencing various types of games – from board and card games to contemporary digital artifacts. He then highlights that the beauty of games stems from the nuanced simulations of the real worlds that these games emulate. Lantz emphasizes the role of games as cultural objects and the significance of digital games as by-products of the modern world in which we live. Although the dilemmas concerning the artistic status of games remain unresolved by Lantz, his book is written in accessible language and offers a fresh perspective on the issue of the relationship between games and art.

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Files to download

Title Pages PDF Editorial Page PDF Contents PDF

Słowa kluczowe: interactive documentary, webdoc, i-doc, data visualization, design, sublime, generative pornography, generative artificial intelligence, AI aesthetics, pornographic services, online porn, glitch, digital sexuality, digital self, algorithmic identity, social media, new media art, Erica Scourti, Timo Toots, Aram Bartholl, visibility, surface, figure of terminal, apparatus, Karolina Jarzębak, postinternet art, cyber folklore, remix culture, Generation Y, binge-watching, streaming platforms, narratives, storytelling, consumption behaviours, electracy, myth, narration, sense, social media

Funding information

The publication of this volume was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Management and Social Communication & Polish Academy of Sciences.